Backstage reason why Shinsuke Nakamura's "cancer" line wasn't supposed to air on RAW
On the September 7th episode of RAW, Shinsuke Nakamura and Cesaro confronted The Street Profits following their victory over Andrade and Angel Garza.
The objective was to set up a Champions vs Champions match the following week and what was interesting to note was a line that Shinsuke Nakamura said, where he mentioned "If they want smoke, they will get cancer".
Using cancer in current WWE TV doesn't seem to fly and although it wasn't Shinsuke Nakamura's fault, Wrestlingnews.co reported that it wasn't the original line that Shinsuke Nakamura had to use.
The report pointed out that soon after, Michael Cole said “Cesaro and Shin saying if they want smoke, they’re gonna get some here tonight.” to fix what they deemed incorrect.
The following week, The Street Profits defeated the SmackDown Tag Team Champions Shinsuke Nakamura and Cesaro.
How did Shinsuke Nakamura get the wrong line?
According to Wrestlingnews.co, it was a case of someone forgetting to alter the version and the script was handed to Shinsuke Nakamura as it was. There was no mention of trouble or backstage heat. Rather, it was simply a case of so much happening backstage that there wasn't anybody to double-check on it.
The backstage environment is normally as such and in many cases, there are reports about how Vince McMahon completely re-writes the script for an episode of RAW himself without much time left.
Such is the nature of the workplace backstage on a show like RAW. Paul Heyman was the man who had creative control on RAW for 10-11 months before he was removed from his position.
Normally, the scripts tend to pass through filters, but this is one of the few exceptions in recent times where that didn't happen.
We were told that the cancer line was not supposed to make it onto the show but with so much happening behind the scenes someone simply forgot to use a different version of Nakamura’s promo.